Upcoming release: Voivod – Post Society EP (2016)

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We got a hint of Voivod’s upcoming plans a while back. Post Society may or may not be building up to Voivod’s next full length, but it still might be of value to fans of the band; it will release on February 26th. Besides compiling the tracks Voivod released as part of their recent splits with At the Gates and Napalm Deaths, this EP will also feature two original tracks and a cover of “Silver Machine” by Hawkwind. At least going by “We Are Connected”, it seems that Voivod is continuing the path set forth by their previous full-length – an accessible mixture of of their signature late ’80s sound with more modern alternative and progressive rock influences.

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Sadistic Metal Reviews mini-feature – Arreat Summit

A quick EP of melodic metalcore/techdeaf – Arreat Summit’s Frostburn definitely hits all the expected points of 2008’s darling fusion – high levels of technical proficiency, candy coated melody, constant breakdowns, haphazard composition, and so forth. Usually this sort of thing doesn’t even rise to the point of being worthy of discussion (and I did find the actual music went almost unnoticed as I listened), but in this case, it resonated with me how eerily similar this is to playing the video games in the Diablo series that inspired it.

A quick primer – The first two games in the series are surprisingly atmospheric titles, at least by the standards of their age. In fact, I would go as far as to say that much of their potency is a result of Matt Uelmen’s excellent soundtrack work; Diablo II in particular frequently demonstrates his ability to mix coherent thematic development into unsettling ambient soundscapes. Back when I was most thoroughly engrossed in the game (read: 2008), though, my attention was instead turned towards repetitively grinding the game’s bosses in the slim hope of locating a powerful item that would allow me to do so slightly more efficiently. That was a much shallower and less fulfilling experience, albeit a powerfully addictive one more capable of destroying productivity than heroin. When you remove the setting from Diablo, it turns the game into a series of tangentially related and nonsensical murders. Similarly, when you remove the ‘setting’ from metal music, you’re left with what is little more than a technical exercise.

In summary, Arreat Summit’s successful portrayal of the grinding postgame of the series (to the point that they are named after a valuable piece of treasure that has no real lore attached to it) is a dubious honor at best.

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Beorn – Time to Dare (2015)

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Power metal, the post-2000 incarnation of speed metal that mixes radio rock and Hollywood-style theatrical music into a hybrid, gets a lot of flack for being cheesy. This is true. However, it is also one of the few areas where metal musicians can create epic music and still have a large audience, since the underground metal audience disconnected from quality with war metal and was replaced with post-hardcore at the hands of vegan SJWs riding fixies to their artisanal bagel shops.
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Insision – Terminal Reckoning (2015)

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Insision take on the dying underground by combining brutal death metal, early technical death metal and adding in mild touches of modern death metal, creating a sound that hammers its listeners with intensity but works melodic leads and song construction into the mix for variety and depth. The result is a cornucopia of charging riffs and melodic turnarounds, in a style similar to later Gorguts mixed with Deeds of Flesh.

The band makes skillful use of dynamics to intensify songs and carefully presents each as a standalone concept. Guttural vocals ride the rhythm riff but break away to freestyle over the more open patterns. This allows Insision to work atmosphere into the blasting and otherwise violent guitar work. Fans of classic German speed metal like Destruction and Kreator will notice similarities as the album goes on; like the best from those bands, Terminal Reckoning uses single chord riffs with chromatic fills for pure rhythm effect.

If this album could improve, it would be in more internal diversity of riff and pace. Its use of melody thrusts aside the modern metal conventions and instead serves to develop songs, which avoids the becalming effect of too much similarity, and the interplay of vocals and guitar follows the mid-80s style instead of trying to constantly contrast the riffs. That and its inherent aggressive attack allows this album to escape the modern metal doldrums and bring back much of what fans adored in old school, technical and brutal death metal.

Thanks to Cátia Cunha from Against PR, Sevared Records and Insision, we can present to you the following streaming track from Terminal Reckoning

You can find out more about Insision at Facebook, YouTube or via Sevared Records.

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Blackdeath – Totentanz (2016)

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Blackdeath is a Russian black metal band that just so happens to perform their lyrics in German. Funny how that works out. I’m not sure what the motivation is, but it’s a mildly interesting bit of trivia that you might get a kick out of. The actual album (which is intended to release on January 1st, 2016, and was provided via promos) was initially released in two parts in 2004, as parts of splits with Mortifera and Leviathan produced in exceedingly small qualities, so while the material is far from new, this may be your first chance to hear what comes off as a competent, but unremarkable and therefore disposable piece of old school black metal. Definitely not “best of 2016” material.

Now, the promo message we were sent claims that Totentanz is “…nothing like you have heard before”, but in my personal experience, there’s not much here that’s particularly novel. Blackdeath’s PR agency was probably listening primarily to the guitar, which showcase a nice mixture of standard melodic black metal phrases with more dissonant, atonal phrases. By not confining themselves to tonal centers, the band has opened up some realms of musical technique that could come in handy. That’s about all I can say in favor of the instrumental end of this album – nothing here is “wrong” or out of place (even the drum machine), but it’s otherwise very standard for its subgenre.

I suppose the specific problem with Totentanz is that it does little to coordinate its individual elements into a coherent whole. Blackdeath seemingly values the “kvlt” side of black metal, and thusly this album is blessed with a stereotypical low fidelity mix. The most prominent issue here is that the percussion is nearly inaudible; this appears to be a constant problem throughout the band’s discography. It’s not really a problem for a more ambient black metal act like Darkthrone or Sorcier des Glaces, but Blackdeath seemingly aspires towards the more violent side of the genre, at least if the rest of their musical elements aren’t misleading me. Totentanz also has the sort of arbitrary songwriting that so many other metal bands fall into. In this case, I find it unusually hard to isolate specific elements for criticism; however, the aesthetic/songwriting mismatch seems to be most responsible for this recording going in one ear and out the other without getting much in the way of proper mental attention.

I guess it’s a dubious honor that the first upcoming release of 2016 I’ve reviewed avoids the Sadistic Metal Reviews pile, but honestly, the best thing I can say about Totentanz is that it’s surrounded by mildly interesting circumstances.

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Shawn Wright (Bestial Evil) responds

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Not surprisingly, Shawn Wright of Bestial Evil was not happy to read our article about the political drama in Baltimore. Having reached out to him once for commentary on the original article, we reached out again, and this time, got some juicy commentary.

“He isn’t a good person,” says Wright, speaking of Tim Snodgrass who experienced phone threats from Mr. Wright several months ago. “He has verbally slandered me for way too long on and offline. The truth is this was personal and he took it to the surface to media attention.”

According to Wright, Snodgrass became unpopular in the tight-knit — “Communal” was the word used — Baltimore scene for first his personal behavior, and then his politics. “It was more personal than that,” he said, referring to the political split and accusations of censorship. “He went wrong when he and I spoke back in 2012. When he got all shitty with me prior. We called a truce. He decided to slander me again and talk shit. I was totally fine with him up until people started to tell me deeper shit that he has done to my homies here.”

Wright says the Baltimore metal scene desires to be more “Communal,” which he takes to mean “working together,” and suggests that Snodgrass did not fit in. In particular, Wright feels Snodgrass was “slandering bands and people for trying to make the scene more Communal” and is a pariah “because he thinks everyone here is a joke beyond his select few people that give him a chance.”

“Tim needs to learn his fucking place with people,” Wright wrote. “He talks a big game. And no one here supports him.” He points out that Snodgrass came to Baltimore later than what Wright views as the original scene. “I was in this city before Tim,” he says.

Wright adds that he sees two reasons for this alienation. Snodgrass took sides in a band dispute in 2012. “He was ‘cool’ with me when I played in Extermination Angel,” Wright says. “I had a falling out with them. And he was one of the people that fucked with me for no apparent reason. Sticking his nose in my business…He was slandering me for the shit I was going through. Then he and I had issues the second time when he started talking all that shit when he was seeing his girlfriend Marie.”

While not the cause of the disagreement, Wright says, the dispute was exacerbated by the political factor: the Baltimore scene, as he sees it, is anti-racist and Snodgrass refuses to join in. “The point is Tim is a fence walker. And that shit isn’t tolerated in the city.” (A “fence walker” is one who approves of politically incorrect music like white power music.)

Wright says that Snodgrass made himself a pariah in the scene for the bands and people he supported. “I’m sure he is friends with sketchy labels like Freezing Records,” he adds. “He had mutual friends here but those individuals are frowned upon as well.” But he claims politics was not the source of the fracture. “He is alienated because he chooses to run his fucking mouth about people.”

Snodgrass, who runs Diabolic Force Distribution, has sold white power material in the past, Wright alleges. “I bought a 7″ some years back when he was working at the Talking Head for a Toxic Holocaust show selling their merch and other shit. I bought an Evil Incarnate record or some band like from him. Only to find out it was Nazi metal. He has sold my buddy Justin Loys white power shit as well. It’s a fucking personal insult selling shit like that in this city.”

An investigation of Diabolic Force distro provided no smoking gun, although some bands with controversial views were clearly present. Wright indicated that “there’s a lot of bands like Blaspherion, Evil Incarnate, Arkhon Infaustus, Graveland, Aryan Blood to name a few” but of those, only Graveland was present on the website, as were other formerly right-wing Eastern European bands like Thunderbolt, Ohtar and Dark Fury. However, the vast majority of the distro seemed to be the mix of war metal, death metal and black metal found at most distros, and none of the releases made explicit mention of white power ideology in song titles, album titles or imagery.

“Some of the bands are good bands. But some of the shit is offensive ass bullshit,” Wright says. Of himself, he says, “I admit I have anger issues. But I’m not a bad guy.” Other sources have indicated the Wright has a family member currently receiving medical care for a life-threatening condition and that this could be putting him under some pressure.

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He forwarded the above screencap, which shows Freezing Records — not Diabolic Force — selling a zine named “Aryan RegardSS” which allegedly has white power, national socialist or white nationalist leanings. The title certainly suggests it. But among many in the metal community, it is considered normal to sell music and zines about metal without scrutinizing them for the politically incorrect content that frequently occurs. Wright disagrees with this approach, and calls it the basis of being a fence walker.

The mystery remains. Diabolic Force distro admits some bands with right-wing political leanings, but these are a tiny minority of what it sells, along with bands like the Nekro Drunkz, Jenkem and Funerus. Clearly it is not a white power distro and its main sin is, as Wright calls it, “fence walking,” which means either refusing to censor bands for their views or not being extreme enough in purging the scene of unpopular views, depending on who you talk to.

To Wright, at least, it doesn’t matter. He sees Snodgrass as antisocial in both behavior and ideology. “He got banned for calling people “Faggot” at Sidebar,” he says. “He is a gossip queen.” And with that, clarity evades us yet again, but it’s good to get the other side of the story.

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Abigail Williams – The Accuser (2015)

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I had high hopes for The Accuser… of a sort. I was expecting an ungainly, melodramatic symphonic black metal ala Dimmu Borgir. Unfortunately, Dimmu Borgir hasn’t released an album for Abigail Williams to ape in over five years!  Cue the necessary stylistic shift, and the dashing of my admittedly dubious hopes, founded on information about this band that was similarly out of date. The Accuser is one of those indie-darling post-black metal albums, and while it’s usually not as blatant about its weepy, depressive influences as Deafheaven or Myrkur (whom I always seem to mention in pairs), it’s still a pretty flat and bland experience.

Abigail Williams’ latest actually pulls on a fairly wide mixture of post-black approaches, although they are generally united by a consistent production. The production team decided to portray this band as just fuzzy and indistinct enough to possibly pass as ‘true’ for a moment, but not enough that the intended audience would complain about a garbled aesthetic. There’s also the occasional awkward high pitched scream strewn in the mix, but it’s an otherwise standard sound. Within this, Abigail Williams explores such things as jangling consonant guitar leads, lengthy drone sections, start-stop riffing, and so forth. Now, there is nothing innately anything about musical techniques, and this is especially the case on this album, where the songwriting is haphazard at best. The difficulty that you often run into with this sort of musical language is that it’s difficult to build off these ideas in any way, whether it be the standard theme and development shtick we advocate around here, a more ambient approach, or much of anything, really. In general, Abigail Williams has a serious problem gluing things together and seemingly tries to hide it with minor stylistic shifts within and between tracks; regardless of their intent they don’t manage to pull off such subterfuge.

For whatever small reasons, I don’t find this album quite as annoying as many of its genre contemporaries. It still is, however, a boring listen that does little of interest with the hand of tricks it’s taken.

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Isvind – Gud (2015)

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Part of me still wants to like Gud. Isvind’s 4th studio album is a textbook example of how to sound like black metal, for sure, but the specific emphasis on consonant melody (mixed with some primitive and ambient elements ala Darkthrone) make for a substyle that at least can be done well in the right hands. Under this admittedly pleasing exterior, though, lies a heart of incoherence and confusion. Isvind, at least in 2015, is random to the core, and their inability to properly organize their songs makes for a tedious 45 minutes.

While this pervasive failure makes it more difficult to zero in on any one flaw, a few are at least more prominent and demanding of attention. One thing I immediately noticed were the presence of gimmicky female vocals – after the short but dissonant prelude at the beginning of the first track, they are scattered very sparsely throughout the rest of the tracks. They fail to add much beyond the occasional peak of shrill dissonance. As I kept analyzing Gud‘s tracks, I found that the tracks were full of these distractions in various forms, whether it was extra instrumentation, or stark shifts in tempo or tonality or other aspects of the songwriting. Each one of these is the musicological equivalent of being constantly pestered by a small child who demands your attention; eventually you get used to it, but that doesn’t make it any less frustrating. To their credit, Isvind manages to incorporate a great deal of dissonance into what is primarily a melodic and consonant style, which makes for some interesting isolated riffs, but since they can’t string the sections of their songs together properly, it almost doesn’t matter. To be fair, I don’t think this problem is caused specifically by the musical exploration, since other black metal bands (read: Averse Sefira) have written far more coherent and therefore interesting songs than are present on display here.

Still, I can’t recommend this in good conscience. It’s not quite as nonsensically random as Myrkur or a Krallice, but it’s a lot closer in spirit to those albums than what its aesthetics may lead you to believe on your initial listen.

P.S: I almost pluralized listens, but you shouldn’t give this album that much attention.

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Misanthropical – Conjuring Thy Infernal Lord

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Coming from that early intersection of death metal and black metal that produced bands such as Havohej, Misanthropical aim for awkward riffs like the sinews of a polymeliac beast, combining them with crudely cut black metal rhythms and surging melodic drones. The result shows a band starting out, but with a good concept that is enough removed into the bizarre, like bands such as Resuscitator or Legion of Doom, to leave us wondering what thought process could create it. The band is strongest when they abandon genre conventions and let the weirdness out, mixing riding riffs that compel energy with connective tissue that bends it into odd contortions, putting the listener on edge. They are weakest when trying too hard to be raw black metal or when filling spaces in songs with cymbal crashes and repetitive drones. Of interest is the unsteady fusion of doom metal moods with the more martial modes, creating a soundscape that sounds like battle by those with vast inner doubt and torment. Conjuring Thy Infernal Lord demonstrates the basics of a powerful voice that with growth and maturation could take this band in interesting and intriguing ear-torturing directions.

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